Remembering New Orleans

August 27, 2006... Tuesday marks the first anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina near New Orleans. More than 1,800 people died and hundreds of thousands more were forced from their homes because of the storm. A full year later, less than half of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population has returned.

At the time, I looked on in disbelief at the images of the people left behind in the Crescent City without water, food or proper shelter. And, like many observors, I found myself wondering if America would have so neglected so many of its own people if they weren't poor and black. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Canada is any better in this respect. Troll the net for references to "Kashechewan," if you ain't believe me...

Anyway, in the aftermath of Katrina, I went on a bit of a New Orleans kick. I haven't been all that successful in finding music from New Orleans that I like--although I did eventually post a track from an excellent record by the Meters here. I sure did find an inneresting book about the place, though.

Desire Street is the story of Curtis Kyles, an African American from a poor neighbourhood in New Orleans who was tried five times for the same murder and spent fourteen years in jail before finally being released. The book left me wondering if Kyles would have been so poorly treated if he wasn't poor and black.

Louisiana's courts have a reputation of bias against African Americans. In the early 1980s, before latching onto the odd idea of recording albums of slightly reggaefied, featherlight Neil Diamond covers, UB40 put out a series of punkish reggae albums with angry, socially-conscious lyrics. One early UB40 song, "Tyler," is about an African American man then languishing in a Louisiana prison for a crime he claimed he didn't commit.

UB40 - Tyler

I have no idea what happened to Tyler. As for Curtis Kyles... Read the book.

Desire Street isn't an easy read. Its level of detail and the conflicting accounts within it are bewildering. But it does make at least one point I had never thought of before: if the amount of a welfare cheque goes down when someone in a household is earning an income, it can be a powerful incentive for a breadwinner to walk out. And where do too many children of single parent families wind up? In jail or huddled together in football stadiums, thirsty, hungry and afraid.

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Excremental, Existential, Sexual Shit

August 24, 2006... I read We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk recently. Comprised of snippets of interviews with luminaries of the LA scene from the early 1970s to the early 1980s, it was good fun.

Among the colourful cast of characters, Kim Fowley stood out as a creepy, older Svengali type. Fowley is credited with creating and directing the career of the Runaways, a band of "five teenage girls dressed in leather and lingerie performing heavy metal." My guess is that as teenage girls in the pre-Bust, pre-Bitch, pre-Shameless world, Joan Jett et al were pretty malleable.

Based on what Fowley has to say about the Go-Go's, however, I suspect that he didn't find Belinda Carlisle and her crowd quite as open to suggestion:

"The scene at the Masque and Canterbury got into a lot of decadence and debauchery, and all of the fucking and sucking, and the heroin and the dog fucking and obese shit-assing with the Go-Go's and their early circle. Somewhere in the vomit, the blood and the vaginal pus, Somewhere among the filthy hypo syringes and the blubber, there probably was poetry. Scene cheerleaders got to have their scabied cunts eaten on dirty roach-infested floors while this loopy music raged and the worms crawled, you know. It was excremental, existential, sexual shit at death's door."

I never liked the Go-Go's much, either, so I can't be bothered to find and post one of their songs, but I will post one by another band from the same era of LA punk.

X - Nausea

Until recently, I wasn't much of a fan of X, either. I always thought their music was good, but could never stomach their one-note-echolalia approach to vocals. Actually, I still can't. But they did a few songs, like "Nausea," where it isn't overwhelming... By the way, in case you ain't already node it, that's Ray Manzarek (formerly of the Doors) on the keyboards. Manzarek, who also produced the first two X albums, hung out with 70s era punks at their filthy clubs, as did David Lee Roth.

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Still Screaming

August 19, 2006... If you're innerested in reading my latest rant about cronyism, go here. If you've come for the music, stay right where you at.

I remember when I bought This Side Up, the second album by DC band Scream. I hated it. To be fair, I'd bought the first Crucifucks and Naked Raygun albums on the same day, so Scream was up against pretty stiff competition, but I just didn't get it. "Sounds like the Beatles," I thought to myself...

Scream - Things to Do Today

When I listened to the album again, almost a decade later, after years spent listening to indie rock, hip-hop and sixties rock, all of which is slower than hardcore and most of which is mellower, I could see This Side Up for the scorcher it is. What a difference a different perspective can make.

The aspects of the album that made me think it sounded "like the Beatles" as a young man were (ahem) harmonies, jangling open chords and the tiniest bit of acoustic guitar. Oh yeah, plus there was that crazy Monkees reference, "I'm not your stepping stone," in one song. Fact is, though, the band usually delivered these "aspects" at speeds well in excess of those of the rest of the rock and roll canon. Make no mistake about it, This Side Up is a lot closer to a Bad Brains album than a Beatles album. In fact, Bad Brains' guitarist Dr. Know even played on one song.

And most of the songs--hardcore punk, hard rock, somewhere between ... even the jammy, post-punk/reggae concoction--are great. None moreso than this one.

Scream - I Look When You Walk

Written from the point-of-view of a homeless person, "I Look When You walk" isn't angry, sad, preachy or any of the other things it could've been in the hands of a less creative band. It's smart and fun, like the rest of the album.

This Side Up has been re-released on CD by Dischord and is packaged together with Scream's first album.

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Fuck the Human Race

August 12, 2006... Every week is tough when you're pushing forty and single. But this week was tougher than most, with people all around me shacking up together, celebrating anniversaries and getting pregnant. Still, I'm holding up fairly well, so any imagined connection between my middle-aged-single-guy angst and the focus of the rest of this post is just that--imagined. This post's been sitting in the chamber for weeks, just waiting for me to pull the trigger on it

Hmm, something about the symbolism in that last sentence haunts me. I can't quite put my finger on it, though...

Judging from the photos of the band on their self-titled 1983 debut LP, Nihilistics were the sort of fellahs my gay, Jewish ass would rather not meet in a dark alley, particularly if my ass was actually gay and Jewish.

Their music was ugly, too. They made no nods in the direction of melody, harmony or anything else you'd find trailer trash named after.

And their lyrics were even uglier. As the reviewer at Trouser Press put it, "People hate hardcore precisely for stuff like this."

Nihilistics - My Creed

But there's something about the way the guitarist played... I'm not sure how he did it, but somehow he managed to sound slightly dissonant at all times. It's probably just incompetence. My guess is that he was stifling a sneeze at every fret with a one-fingered barre chord. But that's just a guess.

And dude's right on top of his game in "My Creed." The open chords he lets ring over the song's pokey beat sound like the lid being slammed down on a grand piano with your lame-ass head inside it. And in case you're wondering, that's a good thing.

Nihilistics - Welfare for the Rich

Just imagine: rich people arranging it so that their rich cronies get richer! What a ludicrous idea! What daydreamers these young fellahs from Long Island must have been!

Nihilistics are still around, although the current version of the band seems only to feature the vocalist and drummer from the version of the band that recorded the debut LP. Frankly, I've never heard a lick of work they've done since 1983, and never really wanted to, either. But, if you're innerested, CD versions of their releases are available here.

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An Old I Never Thought Would Be New Again

August 7, 2006... Lest you think that I only listen to music recorded aeons ago, today's post should dispel that notion. I also listen to music recorded recently that sounds like it was recorded aeons ago.

Danny Michel - Midnight Train

Time for another patented Afterbirth of the Cool contest, os meus amigos. Be the first person to name the song that "Midnight Train" reminds me of and you will win the sense of accomplishment that comes with being the first person to name the song that "Midnight Train" reminds me of.

To make it easier for you, you don't actually have to name the song. You can just describe it.

Think 1979. Think polyester. Think something that rhymes with cocaine. Think something musically and thematically similar to "Midnight Train." Very similar. Come on, you know this one. I guarantee it...

What? You're not familiar with the term "train?" Why, you must be a young whippersnapper! We should get together for coffee.

Now how would I go about describing a train? Lessee... As used in this context, the word "train" is a noun that means "a series of connected railroad cars pulled or pushed by one or more locomotives." Here, this is a photo of a train:

Still drawing a blank, eh? You see, historically, before government subsidies to the automotive and oil industries helped kill it off, there was another mode of transportation called "the railroad." Seriously! Railroads were like real roads except the vehicles travelled on steel rails. It's true! Like, the rails didn't run right into your garage or anything, so you actually had to walk to a station and get on a train with a bunch of strangers, but it was still pretty cool. And get this: in some places, you could even get on a train at midnight and it would go somewhere. That is so messed up!

Anyway, trains disappeared 'round about the time they invented colour. Unfortunately, vapid songs about them did not.

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This Old Will Never Be New Again

August 4, 2006... At some point, almost everything old in music is new again. Space age bachelor pad music, for example, was big in the 1950s, relegated to the scrapheap of history in 1960s, and rose again through the efforts of Stereolab, Combustible Edison and Pink Martini in the 1990s.

Similarly, consider the case of the clavinet. The clavinet was thee keyboard to have in 1972 and the secret ingredient in Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" and Billy Preston's "Outa Space," both of which were hits that year. By 1982, though, the clavinet wasn't even being made anymore. Yet in 1992, you couldn't swing a bat at a twenty-somethings' house party without hearing that fucker. They's clavinet all over the Beastie Boys and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy records of the era.

Billy Preston asked "Will it go 'round in circles?" We can now say definitively that yes, indeed it will--unless it's the bass guitar sound on these three tracks...

The Move - Night of Fear

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?

Love - My Little Red Book

I learned today of the death from leukemia of Arthur Lee. Lee wrote or co-wrote a couple dozen scorchers as leader of the psychedelic folk-rock band Love during the 1960s. Unfortunately, "My Little Red Book" wasn't one of them. Oh, it's a good song, allright, and Lee sang it well, but the royalties cheques arrive in Burt Bacharach and Hal David's mailbox.

However, all of this is beside the point. What I want to know is: how did they get the bass guitar to sound so shitty? I mean, I've heard more sustain from a plucked grape. Seriously! The same is true of today's other two songs, both of which also date back to the 1960s

That magical bass sound, I'd venture to say, is one old that will never be new again. And that's too bad.

*****

There is a version of Zappa's We're Only in it for the Money out there with different bass tracks dubbed in after the fact and/or the original bass tracks puffed up with effects. Unfortunately, there is no warning of this on the CD packaging. If you buy a copy and it doesn't sound like shit, bring the fucker back. It's meant to be heard like it was meant to be heard.

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